Festival Director James McNally is attending this year’s Sundance Film Festival from January 21st to February 2nd.
Festival Day 3
Today was our day of “Shorts Before Features” with three premieres scheduled. First up was Dia de la madre at the Egyptian. It was paired with the Chilean documentary The Mole Agent and it was a pretty straightforward and easygoing event. The filmmakers told me their short was originally just a clip from a feature documentary they’re hoping to make, and so getting into Sundance will likely increase the chance of that happening successfully. They seem genuinely surprised and grateful to be here. I hope the audience liked this charming and quirky story as much as I did.
Since I’m staying much closer to Main Street than I have in the past, I was able to just meet Terry at the Egyptian at 10am. I headed down about an hour earlier to check out what’s going on at Slamdance, Park City’s “other dance.” As always, their program looks really interesting and it’s all concentrated in one place, the Treasure Mountain Inn. SNP alumna filmmaker Supinder Wraich is there with an episode of her excellent short series The 410 which is available to stream on CBC Gem.
I continue to fight off a sore throat and cough, but at least it doesn’t seem to be getting worse. After the Egyptian, Terry and I headed back to HQ and then I grabbed lunch at Este Pizza before we headed off to the Prospector for our second premiere, See You Next Time before the feature documentary Time. This feature had a huge group on the press line and so was a bit more complicated to navigate, but we got everyone in on time. Our filmmaker, Crystal Kayiza, was also here last year with a short film I enjoyed very much called Edgecombe. I predict a strong feature debut is not far away.
A gap in my schedule meant I could come home and have a short nap and some dinner before meeting up with Terry again to go to the Temple Cinema for the first time this year. That was for the short Meridian, which preceded the New Frontier feature Sandlines, the Story of History. Both film teams were very easygoing and we ended our night just after 9pm. Our Artist Relations driver Paul dropped us back at the Park Avenue Hotel and I decided to stop into the bar to have a beer. I was joined a bit later by Marci, who I’ve volunteered with for three years now. She was meeting a friend who drives all the prints to the cinemas for the festival, so we had an interesting conversation. Other people were dropping by all the time, so I was able to say hello to shorts programmer Jon Korn and have a fuller conversation with my friend Tom Hall, programming director of the Montclair Film Festival. Marci and I left around 11:35 and although I was able to get a fast shuttle to the transit hub on Main Street, I had to wait another 45 minutes for a bus to take me to Deer Valley. I could have walked it in 15-20 minutes but it was dark and cold. It’s now 12:50am and I need to be back at HQ by 9am tomorrow. So much for getting more sleep. Goodnight Park City!